my definition is my words
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: I just don't yet know the words to describe the something that I am.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Written for the Different Combinations Challenge, combining series prompt #13 – duology from List A, with styles prompt #1 – poetic prose/prosaic poetry. Taking advantage of the prompt to play around with more experimental writing. Enjoy!

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><p><strong>my definition is my words<br>**_Chapter 1_

**.**

Sometimes, I have to wonder…what makes a human?  
>Where is that little facet that, when turned, makes a human bleed<br>but a monster simply squawk like a black crow attempting to be the innocent dove…

But crows are not doves, and monsters are not humans.  
>Maybe…monsters are just better at pretending to be a human<br>even if they don't understand…  
>or <em>I<em> don't understand…but I'm not a monster either, so maybe that's why…  
>or rather, I don't <em>call<em> myself a monster. I might as well be.

Sometimes, then, I wonder: what is a monster? What makes one?  
>What makes someone a monster? Or not? What makes someone call themselves a monster…<p>

What makes someone call themselves anything?  
>What <em>makes<em> someone anything?

I'm not a human. I'm not a monster.  
>Rather, those are not words I use to describe me.<br>I do not cry or laugh. Sweat or bleed. Flee or chase. I just drift.  
>I just exist.<p>

Don't ask me who I am; I can't answer that.  
>I am not no-one, nothing, because I exist. Or I say I exist.<br>But all else from that is inexact.  
>Not blackness: that is too precise, too exact. Something else. Something less black.<br>But not white. White is far too bright. And the dusk is…well…

**.**

He is Cherubimon. Or so he says. He calls himself by that name. Others call him by that name.  
>Maybe it is his name. But, somehow, it doesn't seem to <em>fit<em>.  
>Something's wrong with that name. Something missing. Or something extra. Something there.<br>Something not there. Something that was there before…or perhaps never there.

It doesn't matter all that much to me. He is he. I am I.  
>But "I" is not a name. A pronoun used to replace a name. Replace an identity.<br>So then…who am I?

'You are Duskmon.' Or so he says. So he calls me by that name.  
>I don't believe that <em>is<em> my name. Things are often called names that aren't theirs. Names that are  
>merely ill-fitting labels slapped on, sometimes carelessly with chewing-gum on the back to hold it there.<br>It'd dry out, eventually. Or fall off. Or some kid in detention would scrape the chewing gum off the desk bottom  
>and then that'd be the end of it. That label.<p>

Names should be everlasting. Or that's what I think. Maybe I believe it too  
>but the truth is I don't feel enough to believe. I don't <em>know<em>.

And, sometimes. I don't _want_ to know.

**.**

I am a digimon. That is what he says.  
>But, in the rippling water under the near fall moon, I see another face.<br>A face beneath the mask I wear.  
>A face that looks human.<p>

I don't know why I think it does: look like a human. I have never met one. Never remember meeting one.  
>And, yet, that is what I think. A human face. Not a digimon one. Or, at least, one that looks like a human<br>beneath the mask. Or, maybe, it is just another mask.  
>Just like this mask that I've worn for as long as I can remember.<p>

It's a pathetic mask, really. Does not conceal my eyes. Or my face.  
>Or maybe it does, because when I take it off, they change.<br>Red eyes become blue. Dark, sun-burnt and moon-kissed, skin becomes light and pale:  
>innocent.<br>I don't know why that word comes to mind.

Innocence. It's another word. Perhaps a meaningless one. A zero on a scale that has infinity between zero and one.  
>Everything aside from zero is the opposite of innocence. The guilty. The sullied. The coloured.<br>Only pure white can be white. If such purity exists.  
>But I digress.<p>

Red eyes become blue. Small slit eyes become larger, wider…and more uncertain.  
>I am a plethora of uncertainty as I am.<br>And why does my face change so much without the mask?  
>Even my hair…long and yellow like the face of the moon to short strands of dark like the starless sky…<p>

Where has the moon gone?

**.**

The moon goes through cycles of death and rebirth. It waxes. It wanes. It disappears. It returns.  
>It has a cycle that defines the nights, like the sun defines the day.<p>

No, that is too inexact. Inaccurate. The movement of the sun defines the day, yes, but not like the night.  
>It travels through the sky. Starts in the east: that teasing glimmer poking its head over the mountaintop.<br>It dips in the west. Below the line of trees. Into the ocean of water beyond.  
>It defines a day within its limits and nothing more.<p>

But the moon is not like that. It says constant in a night. Flittered by shadows. Flanked by stars.  
>Sometimes, it is a starless night.<br>And it changes, every night. A little bigger. A little smaller. A little different from the night before.  
>It defines days as parts of a larger whole. Something <em>meaningful.<em>  
>Every day is the same. And they repeat. Endlessly. Uselessly.<p>

Why must the days repeat? What is to be gained from one unchanging day that another cannot offer?  
>The night, at least, gives the impression of time flowing within those invisible riverbanks.<br>Flowing somewhere.

But even the nights are slow.

**.**

Not much moves in the night. The days, for how unchanging they are, are full of flurries of activity.  
>Senseless activity. I am yet to see something accomplished with them. And neither does Cherubimon.<br>He is disappointed. I am indifferent. The failure of his servants means nothing to me.  
>They call me a servant but I am not one of them. Or, I don't call myself one of them.<br>Cherubimon does not call me his servant either.

It's another label. Servant. Master – I am not a master either. An observer, perhaps.  
>An observer watches. I see the flurry of activity in the day, but it is the night I watch, the night upon which I stand vigil.<br>The night…to which I converse.  
>The day doesn't stand around to listen. It comes and goes and returns, unchanged.<br>The night changes. The night pauses. It listens. It _breaths_.  
>It sings a slow enough dance that I, who cannot dance, can waltz to its tune.<p>

**.**

The dance is slow. Careful. Pallid.  
>There is no destination, unlike the singer: that moon whose course is plotted out,<br>who reaches an end and a beginning and countless steps in a cycle, spaced out but repeating…  
>Like the day, who repeats its pilgrimage from the east to the west and then under earth…<p>

I have no destination. I stand vigil upon the darkness: the darkness in my mind, my heart  
>and my world.<p>

In the darkness are my questions. My words. My rememberings.  
>After a point – or before a point I suppose – I remember nothing.<br>This dance has long since become an endless loop like the night and the day.

I am Duskmon. I am not. I am a digimon. I am not.  
>Without my mask I look human. I am not. Without the human I look like a monster. I am not.<br>I exist. I dance in endless days and endless nights with the slowly cycling moon.  
>I am not nothing. I cannot be nothing.<p>

I just don't yet know the words to describe the something that I am.


	2. Chapter 2

**my definition is my words  
><strong>_Chapter 2_

**.**

Time passes  
>a song until it reaches a peak<br>and then it rushes, it slows:  
>suddenly clumsy, suddenly shy –<br>shying away, as though it has a secret  
>it wants to keep;<br>a secret that I want to tear apart,  
>that I seek.<p>

Time has done this: made a slow slewed life  
>pallid, the prickles of boredom like dull thorns<br>scratching but failing to pierce  
>this dark hide…<p>

Time has suddenly started running, rushing  
>in a tangle of disarray<p>

And here I am, lost,  
>similarly disarrayed.<p>

**.**

Friends and enemies. They matter.  
>Even when I don't know who I am, there are ties bound to me:<br>to my name that feels as though it doesn't belong to me,  
>to my body, my face, my trait –<p>

The knight of darkness, they call me.  
>Tall, dark, silent…<br>all of them traits that define me: define this shell  
>I pretend to be.<br>Because though "Duskmon" is a name that rolls badly on my tongue,  
>I use it; what else is there for me to use? To call myself?<br>I am not a thing, nor am I human.  
>I am an existence who is more, but what more<br>is a word, or words, still lost to me.

Despite that, friends, and enemies – they matter.  
>They matter because there is a battle. A war.<br>Humans fighting. Monsters fighting.

Digital Monsters. Digimon. That is who Duskmon is.  
>And yet there is still that face that looks all too human<br>beneath the mask  
>that won't let me accept that monster<br>the world claims me to be…

Or, maybe, it's this small part of the world:  
>the only part, still, that I know.<p>

**.**

The world is a small piece of a larger puzzle  
>but even in this confines, it is too confusing, too chaotic –<br>the way the sun and move struggle in the sky,  
>winning, losing – never staying.<br>The way the light and darkness tangle.  
>Why this place is a black dot on the map of the world<br>and yet it disobeys all rules of darkness:  
>no blindness, no light…<p>

Or, maybe, there is a light, somewhere  
>a soft light that doesn't rip and tear and kill<br>like on other pieces of this land.

At least the darkness means there's less I need to know  
>about this world.<p>

**.**

Darkness is the first thing I recall.  
>That spread of…something, holding me close and cold<br>and that voice in my ear, guiding me  
>when there was nothing to be seen, no road to follow spread<br>before me…

The light is, in comparison to that, a dizzying thing  
>that holds answers teasingly out of reach,<br>too far out of reach.

And I hadn't wanted those answers enough back then  
>to give chase.<p>

**.**

I want those answers now. After meeting them. Meeting _him_.

It had been perfect innocent at first. My comrades –  
>if I could call them that…but what else was there to call<br>those who lived beneath the same roof as I,  
>and served the same master?<p>

Though I do not like that term: master  
>and servant, bound in servitude…<br>yet I follow his orders still.  
>I bind myself to such a relationship still.<p>

And it was by those orders, to destroy the eyesores  
>in this dark and quiet land, that I went.<br>Maybe I wanted them gone as well.  
>Annoying little blips of light in a dark landscape.<p>

Nothing had ever…well, annoyed me before.  
>Broken that languid flow.<br>It was a feeling. Something that broke the monotone.  
>It was a feeling I didn't like; I wanted gone.<p>

Later, I would learn the feeling of pain and annoyance would become a fly buzzing in my ear.  
>Why I remembered the sound of a fly buzzing, I couldn't say.<br>It wasn't the same as Flymon though. That much I knew.  
>Why? Again, I couldn't say.<p>

**.**

It was those children. Whispers had preceded them,  
>before they'd even come into this continent – the place that was supposed to stand, whole<br>while the rest of the world crumbled, out of sight  
>like a child growing out of their bedtime tales.<p>

It was they who disturbed the peace: disturbed this aimless, smooth wandering of the times  
>that could have gone on forever, as sense was lost in time…<br>but it didn't do that; they didn't let it do that,

Instead they trampled upon the peace, upon the monotonous routine  
>until the quiet was shattered with grumbles and the moon<br>darker than ever before because a cloud of dust had rose up to obscure it  
>and there was nothing quiet anymore…<p>

They didn't whine to me but I heard them still; they echoed through the castle,  
>through the dark and empty spaces I flitted through like a ghost, a shadow.<br>Finally, I decided I would see for myself: this fuss, these children  
>who did not belong, who broke the timeless flow.<p>

**.**

I saw them. The children.  
>At first there had been nothing interesting about them at all:<br>fragile looking, weak, like numerous flies collecting but struggling, still struggling…  
>because no matter how many flies there were, they wouldn't be able to defeat a giant beast,<br>a monster…

And then they showed their worth. Or how weak Arbormon was:  
>Arbormon who had a name for everything, who had words for everything.<p>

Those words had proved useless to him.  
>Maybe searching was that important a quest.<br>Maybe searching stopped that backslide,  
>stopped a monster who should be powerful from being eaten alive<br>by a swarm of flies.

My stomach curled. It was a very disgusting sight, suddenly, and my sword moved  
>on its own.<p>

Monsters left no carcass, I learnt that day.  
>Monsters did not know hesitation, nor blood nor truth.<p>

Suddenly, I didn't care about the truth.  
>They asked my name and I gave it to them:<br>Duskmon, without hesitation.

I wonder why.  
>Maybe I was annoyed again.<br>Weak children who had suddenly gone strong.  
>Lack of control.<p>

Or maybe I was looking at their faces and thinking  
>how very like the face in the water they looked<br>and yet here was proof that they were monsters too:  
>dressed up just like I,<p>

With a mask to boot.


End file.
